Today, we had the chance to converse with David Cherner, the Co-Founder and CEO at YOL. The company delivers transformative learning experiences for professionals and teams. They combine wellbeing training and mindfulness-based service engagement as a foundation for impactful leadership development.

We talk about the importance of culture, how he came up with the business concept and many more!

Health and Wellness Exec

David spent most of his prior career in the health and wellness arenas, both as an executive and strategy consultant. He shares to us how YOL (a Turkish word for path or road) was born out of personal wellness experience. He was so refreshed and transformed that he wanted to package a similar experience for other middle-aged people who wanted to get a kick start in life.

“We started as a B2C trip and retreat company. Fast forward 6 years to now we’ve evolved into a hybrid experiences company. Now we consider ourselves a pure B2B corporate learning and well-being company.” – David Cherner

The Ultimate Experience

David and his team spent about 6 months doing research on the broader retreat space. He even found himself immersed in a humanitarian trip to Haiti. Ultimately, they end up with the idea of taking people to beautiful places where the aesthetics and the environment would automatically transport them to connect their mind and body. 

“Teaching them how to meditate, giving them some stress reduction techniques, giving them some killer yoga⁠—so they kind of sit in their heads and their bodies. The ultimate goal of our experience? Their heads are clear, their bodies are rejuvenated, and already they feel like they’ve accomplished something and they’re ready to take on what’s next in their world” – David Cherner

Importance of Culture

As a strong believer that Culture outweighs any strategy, Jaime Jay poses a question for David about his personal definition of culture. 

“Culture is the soul of the company. It’s the vibe, its the DNA. That’s how I would describe it and you can describe it, the norms, certain behaviors of different people and so on and so forth but to me, its something you really feel.” – David Cherner

Download and listen to Transformative Learning and Wellbeing For Leadership Development to learn more. Remember to let David know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the link below:

Linkedin: David Cherner

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